Tiding by Sian Collins
A lyrical, engaging coming-of-age murder mystery set in the Great Freeze
December 1962. Eleanor O’Dowd, a middle-aged piano teacher, is found stabbed and bludgeoned to death. As the Great Freeze of 1963 takes hold, local vicar’s daughter Daphne Morgan finds herself forced to navigate the confusing currents of the adult world, where she must face up to her own crimes and what she knows about the murder.
#Tiding @sian_collins @honno #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour
A novel about memory and the power of the imagination…
‘She stands on the margin of the ebb tide. The air is foul, a miasma of things lost or drowned; the reek of dead stuff.’
My Review
This was my era, my childhood though not one I particularly recognise. Set in the Great Freeze of 1963 (which I don’t actually remember though I know I should), Daphne Morgan aged 10 and her elder sister Sylvia are the daughters of the local vicar. They spend most of their time outdoors with their friends, getting up to mischief.
When Daphne and her chums break into the bone house and steal a skull (is it that of the Beaker woman?) it sets off a chain of events that they believe is their fault. Obsessed with the curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the mysterious deaths of the explorers that followed, they think that their friend Martin’s sudden illness is the result of a ‘curse’, as is every other bad event that follows. Daphne must put the skull back, but it doesn’t go to plan and she is too scared to tell anyone.
While she is bunking off her piano lesson to go to the bone house, her middle-aged piano teacher Eleanor O’Dowd, is brutally murdered. Deaf mute Johnny Parry is the obvious suspect, but what motive could he possibly have?
This is one of those wonderful books that is made up of quirky characters, perfectly drawn settings and a feeling of warmth (despite the snow), wrapped around a murder mystery. Reminiscent of novels like When God Was A Rabbit or The Trouble With Goats And Sheep, it sees the world from the children’s point of view.
Tiding is about childhood, growing up in rural Wales, family, mystery, superstition and coming-of-age. The suspicion around Johnny shows the darker side of living in the sixties, where his disability makes him the obvious suspect just because he’s the ‘village idiot’ like the John Mills character in Ryan’s Daughter. Fifty years later and not much had changed.
I loved this book. It’s both gentle and dramatic, dark and mystical and it will transport you back to simpler times, when children could roam freely and not worry about today’s social pressures.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Siân Collins was born in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. An Edinburgh graduate, she taught Anglo Saxon and Medieval Literature in South Africa, worked as an assistant editor on The Lancet, and ran English and Drama departments in several well-known London secondary schools. She returned to Carmarthenshire to teach, write, and relish life in the beautiful Tywi Valley. Her debut novel, Unleaving, was published in 2019.
